Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly wants his players to think before they tweet, and will leave one of his defensive tackles in South Bend this weekend.
According to ESPN, Kelly announced Jay Hayes, a backup defensive lineman, would not make the Fighting Irish's trip to Foxborough, Mass. to play UMass on Saturday. A sophomore, Hayes criticized Notre Dame's football staff in a since-deleted post to his Twitter account.
Hayes posted another tweet in which he indicated he wants to "get this [National Championship] and I'm out." His first tweet read: "When a coach stops coaching you...that's when you jus[t] gotta move on."
College Spun obtained screen shots of the tweets, both of which were deleted.
"You have to think before you hit send, and what you have to do is knock on my door instead of hitting the send button," ESPN quoted Kelly telling reporters on Thursday. "If he has a job at Google and talks about his boss that way, he probably is not going to have a job the next day.
"You just tell them, 'Look, you need to make a better decision next time or it's going to impact you when you leave here.' He won't be on the travel roster this week for that mistake."
Hayes only played in three games as a backup last season after reaching a mutual agreement with his coaches not to redshirt due to the team's lack of depth on the defensive line, Notre Dame Insider reported. This season, Hayes has yet to play in a snap for the Irish.
"We like Jay, just like we like [Grant] Blankenship, just like we like [Andrew] Trumbetti, who didn't play last week," Kelly said. "These are guys that are champing at the bit to play. They want to play. But we've got good players, and that's a good problem to have. Jay Hayes is going to be fine. Just a good life lesson."
